1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the area of image display, and more particularly to a method and system for displaying recursively images on a display screen of a mobile device, wherein the images are of larger dimensions than that of the display screen and the mobile device may include a cellular telephone, a two-way pager, and a palm-sized computing device:
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a rapidly growing communication network of interconnected computers and computer networks around the world. Together, these millions of connected computers form a vast repository of multimedia information that is readily accessible by any of the connected computers from anywhere at any time. To navigate the Internet, the connected computers, such as workstations and desktop computers, typically operate what is commonly called xe2x80x9cbrowserxe2x80x9d, an application (client) program that generally uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to make requests to the multimedia information throughout the Internet. These computers capable of operating the browser using HTTP are generally powerful, having sufficient computing resources, such as processing power, memories, display capabilities and user interfaces. When the multimedia information is static image data, only constrained to the local memory, the image data can be downloaded to the computers and then manipulated and displayed. To provide mobility and portability of the Internet, interactive two-way communication mobile devices are introduced and capable of communicating, via wireless data networks, with the Internet. The interactive two-way communication mobile devices, including two-way pagers, cellular phones, palm-sized computing devices and personal digital assistant (PDA) apparatuses are among the fastest emerging communication devices introduced recently that enable users to receive, collect, analyze, review and disseminate information as they travel or move about. Contrary to the computers coupled to the Internet, the mobile devices are characterized by thin designs in terms of power consumption and cost constraints that may include less memory, Lower processing power, etc. Consequently, displaying images on the mobile devices has been a difficult task. Further, the input interface provided is often limited to a keypad or soft keys that have far fewer available keys than a PC keyboard does. Furthermore, the mobile devices, such as the cellular phones, are often lack of a pointing mechanism as opposed to a mouse coming with nearly every desktop computer. Hence interacting with a displayed image becomes even a more difficult task.
There is, therefore, a great need for a solution that allows an image to be displayed on the screen of a mobile device without taking up the local memory therein and further permits a user to interact with the image when being displayed.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above described problems and needs and has particular applications to the navigation of Internet web pages by two-way interactive communication mobile devices. The design constraints commonly seen in the mobile devices includes a relatively slow processor, less memory and limited graphics make it economically and technically impractical for the mobile devices to operate a regular browser so as to display images created for those personal computers. The principles of this invention, nevertheless, make it now possible for the thin designed mobile devices to effectively interact with the Internet to display recursively those images.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the image requested by a mobile device is first processed in a server device. In accordance with a set of parameters about the screen of the mobile device, the requested image is transformed to a reduced version that fits well into the screen. In addition, the reduced version is inherently divided into a number of subareas, each embedded a link to a detailed version thereof and associated with one of the keys in the mobile device. When the reduced version is displayed on the mobile device, a user decides to view an area that falls into one of the subareas, a corresponding key is activated. A new request including the link is sent to the server device that consequently returns the detailed version. Similary, the detailed version is inherently divided into the same number of subareas. As a result, all parts in the original image can be recursively viewed.
The advantages of the invention are numerous. Different embodiments or implementations may yield one or more of the following advantages. The original image does not have to be downloaded into a mobile device, which aleviates a very high bandwidth requirement on a wireless data network and reduces traffics therein. A user will not experience any significant delay when requesting an image from a web site as now only a fixed number of image data are transmitted every time a request is made. Further the images could be created independently from the screen sizes of mobile devices that are often varying in sizes and types.
Accordingly, one of the objects of this invention is to provide a generic solution to two-way communication mobile devices that can effectively interact with a data network, such as the Internet, for images.